I won’t comment on the women thing (mostly because I don’t care) but, having eaten more than my fair share of freshly-defrosted pub meals, I really can’t blame him for saying British food is mediocre. Frankly, a Whopper is much tastier than some of the stuff I’ve had in ‘proper’ restaurants! And it’s made on site unlike, say, pub lasagne…

A delicacy from Cornwall - not a hoax

I do wish journalists would stop running to Michelin-starred chefs in order to get a tediously predictable reaction every time someone points out the bleeding obvious; what does Marcus Wareing know about ordinary food anyway? He makes elitist food for the rich! Does he ever set foot in the average greasy spoon or pub (not the gastro variety) where most people eat? Has he ever been told, upon asking for mash with his gammon, “Sorry, we’re out of mash but we do have baked potatoes”? Yup, true story.

Maybe he should eat at Aberdeen Angus Steakhouse and Harvester every day for a month, and then I’ll be prepared to listen to his opinion. “An insult to British gastronomy”, he calls it. If you stopped a random Brit in the street and asked them what gastronomy was, they’d probably say they got it right after Christmas and didn’t get off the loo for 12 hours.

Your guess is as good as mine

The truth is, what is on offer to tourists, foreigners (and British people) who aren’t lucky enough to experience good family cooking or expensive restaurants tends to be pretty rubbish. And that’s a shame because these people then go home believing ALL British food is rubbish – which isn’t far off the truth but is still a tad unfair I suppose.

Mariella Frostrup has managed to build a whole career on first dyeing her hair blonde and then complaining incessantly about what a sexist nightmare life as a blonde is. Every single interview I’ve had the misfortune to come across contains a new blonde-related whinge. Enough!

I’m a natural blonde, I read books (fancy that), I have a modicum of culture and am not afraid to show it when necessary (oooh), and yet I can’t say I’ve ever knowingly been discriminated against, mocked or singled out in a negative way for my hair colour. Nobody has ever so much as told a blonde joke in front of me. I can’t recall any other blonde celebrities going on about it either, certainly not to that extent anyway.

Just bottle it already

So what on earth is the woman doing wrong? Perhaps it has nothing to do with being blonde and everything to do with being smug and irritating? Perhaps she could refrain from mentioning having met George Clooney in every interview (only to go all coy when asked if she slept with him)? Perhaps she could stop saying things like “I never cease to be astonished that people are still stereotyped according to their hair colour” to make herself sound like some fearless campaigner for hair-related human rights?

The problem is, she doesn’t actually care about other people. For instance, never does she mention the much more real hostility redheads face, especially in this country. Never does she point out a blatant example of discrimination that happened to another blonde.

Nope, it’s All. About. Mazza.

She’s also guilty of doing this bloody annoying parent thing of believing the world is only worth saving because her precious kids will be living in it:

“This is the first time sexism has been on the news agenda in 20 years, and about time too. I’ve got a daughter and I want her to grow up in a different environment to the one I’ve slogged my way through; equal opportunity is a human right.”

1. Oh please. People like her are the ones who automatically call you selfish if you have no children because you can’t possibly care about anything, since you have no flesh and blood to hand over the world to. Because that’s the only reason one might care about the environment we live in, obviously.

2. “Slogged her way through” an unforgiving, blonde-hating, sexist world, has she? She’s only 6 years older than me and I call bullshit. I also can’t help but notice all that hatred wasn’t enough to stop her running to the hairdresser’s every six weeks to get her roots done. Draw your own conclusions.